


Disclosure

by Welfycat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Gen, community: angst bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-01
Updated: 2010-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welfycat/pseuds/Welfycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney offers an unexpected explanation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disclosure

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Angst Bingo 2010. Prompt: Child Abuse.  
> Content notes: contains non-graphic discussion of past child abuse.

When Rodney fled the infirmary he knew that he was attracting attention to himself. He knew that Elizabeth, Carson, and John would be exchanging glances that meant Rodney was being melodramatic or pathetic, or whatever else those looks they made when they thought he was too self-absorbed to be paying attention meant. It didn’t matter what they thought, at least this time. There was only so much he was capable of tolerating and that little situation had well exceeded his limits. Rodney wrapped his arms tightly around his chest and forced himself to take even breaths as he kept a quick pace, heading as far away from the infirmary as possible but passing up the transporter without a glance. There was no way he was calm enough to be in such a small place for even a few moments.

Rodney walked for what felt like ages, his eyes staring vacantly in the distance. All his attention was focused on the torrent of emotions that overwhelmed him, threatening to tear him apart until he was shaking. He wanted to yell, or scream, or hit someone, or throw things. Usually this reaction was caused by rampant stupidity in his labs, where he didn’t hesitate to yell and throw things and question the intelligence of pretty much everyone in sight. He couldn’t react like that to the conversation in the infirmary, couldn’t yell at how stupid and ignorant they all were. If he took a moment to care, he knew it wasn’t their fault they didn’t understand, even though the acknowledgement didn’t make him any less flooded with rage. It took all of his concentration to just keep breathing steadily, filling his lungs and exhaling on steady counts so that he wouldn’t wind up passing out and being subjected to yet another exasperated lecture about his hypochondria.

He stopped walking when he no longer felt like he was about to explode or lash out, looking over corridors he’d never seen before. Even though they’d been on Atlantis for over two years there was so much they hadn’t seen, so many places they hadn’t explored that could hold any number of miraculous things. Of course, past experience indicated the Ancients had left behind plenty of deadly traps and half finished experiments instead of miracles and solutions, without so much as a sticky note to indicate when something might be dangerous. Rodney trailed his fingers down the wall as he slowly walked, only briefly wondering where he was. He didn’t care that he didn’t have a radio; half thought that he wouldn’t really mind if there was some emergency that he wasn’t there to fix in time to save the day.

He wandered down the hallway, the lights flickering in a few places where things weren’t quite getting all the power they needed. Passing doorways without bothering to explore he kept walking through the maze of halls, slowly and more calmly than before. Sometimes even the small population of Atlantis was enough to push him to the edge. He smiled a small bitter smile, barely more than a twitch of the corner of his mouth. And the SGC had thought they’d been punishing him by sending him to a remote outpost on Russia. All the quiet and the cold and the dead space surrounding him had been a blessing. And the Russian scientists were good coworkers, barely speaking to him beyond what they needed to communicate for their projects. Rodney liked to believe that he’d perfected his scientific monologues in Russia, with no one interrupting him as he explained the incredible leaps of genius that he made on a daily basis. Of course, no one listened to his lectures there, but he wasn’t really sure that anyone listened to him on Atlantis either.

The hallway ended in an archway, leading out into a small observation lounge. The chairs were stacked against the far wall leaving the floor to ceiling windows completely open to the sunset; the sun nearly finished dipping behind the ocean. Rodney walked to the windows and stared out, the edges of the city barely visible from this room. The walk had drained most of the anger from him, leaving him with an awful sickened feeling that he usually pushed away by disappearing into deep theory for a few days, only coming up for food and coffee. Only when he worked himself until he was so tired that he wasn’t even sure he was still awake would he be able to return to his bedroom and sleep without dreams.

“McKay?” The call of John’s voice caused a brief resurgence of the rage that had consumed him early but Rodney pushed it back down. He kept his back towards the door and his eyes focused forward, wondering how long he would have to ignore John before he would be left alone.

“McKay? You alright?” John was closer that time, somewhere to the back and the left but still out of reach. John was always the military mind, never really able to shrug off all that combat training even when interacting with his teammates and other people on Atlantis. Rodney would have thought ‘friends’ in place of ‘teammates’ but he was pretty sure that John didn’t have friends.

“Rodney?” John was even closer now, nearly even with Rodney at the windows. His voice had gone from annoyed to concerned and uncertain.

“What?” Rodney finally responded, suddenly too worn out to even sound exasperated. Instead he just sounded lost and far away.

John hesitated, like he didn’t know what to say now that Rodney had finally responded. “You forgot your radio.”

Rodney could see John holding out a radio to him in the reflection of the window. Without really thinking about it Rodney turned his head to the side ever so slightly. It could have just meant that something outside had caught his attention, but John clearly recognized it as the refusal that it was.

John clipped the extra radio back onto his own belt and stood with Rodney, staring out into the ocean as the sun finished its descent behind the horizon. The room slowly fell to dusk, the lights in the hallway cutting a dim path of light into the room. “Do you want to explain what happened back there?”

“No.” Rodney really didn’t want explain what had happened. He wasn’t even sure he could put into words what had happened.

“Do you want to try? McKay, you can’t just go storming off whenever you feel like it.” John’s voice had reverted to the aggravated tone he used whenever he felt that Rodney was being particularly rude about whatever ridiculous native customs they encountered.

That tone, the one that meant whatever was going on was his fault, was the last straw. Rodney slammed his hands against the window, now nearly completely dark, and had a brief moment of relief when they didn’t shatter beneath his fists despite the shooting pain from the impact. “My dad used to beat the shit out of me and my sister. So I’m sorry if I can’t just stand there and fucking listen to Carson and Elizabeth go on about how tragic those kids laying in the infirmary are, and how horrible it is, and how can anyone do such a thing.” Rodney swung around to face John, the rant dying on his lips at John’s expression.

John couldn’t have looked more stunned if Rodney had landed a punch, his eyes wide and his lips slightly parted. He moved his mouth slightly as if he was trying to say something but couldn’t find any words.

The reality of what he’d just done caught up with Rodney and he stumbled back, bumping into the chairs that were stacked against the wall. He sat down on the edge of one and examined his trembling hands; they still stung but there wasn’t any scrapes or blood. He felt slightly light headed and it took him a moment to realize that he was breathing quickly and shallowly. It was almost like he was having a panic attack, even though he didn’t feel panicked at all. He didn’t really feel anything.

“Rodney?” John asked with a soft empathy that Rodney had never seen directed his way before. John was somehow kneeling at Rodney’s side when he’d been standing across the room just a second ago. The lights from the hall barely offered any illumination in the corners of the room and John seemed little more than an outline of a man.

Rodney shook his head, wondering if John could even see him. “I just couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t.” His voice sounded foreign to his ears, as if some part of him was speaking that he wasn’t in control of.

“Okay,” John quickly agreed. He sat back on his haunches, apparently waiting for Rodney to pull himself together enough to go back to the more populated sections of Atlantis.

Rodney thought that it could take a while. The quiet stretched on through what seemed like all the the eternities from all the realities all joined seamlessly together. The sound of their breathing was the only thing that filled the air; John’s steady and soft, Rodney’s coming in occasional gasps as he fought back to equilibrium. His mind had somehow gone mercifully blank, his rapid-fire genius all contained rather than rushing over him like waves on a stormy beach. 

“I’ve never told anyone before. It would have been bad,” Rodney finally blurted out, still somewhat surprised that he was speaking at all. “Jeannie didn’t either. Not even her husband. She thought she could make it all go away if she had a family of her own. I couldn’t stay. Couldn’t watch it all happen again if he was like my dad. I couldn’t stand to see her broken down like that again.”

John nodded again, their eyes having adjusted to the darkness enough to be able to make out glimpses of facial features. John’s brow was drawn in and his lips pressed tightly together.

“She says he doesn’t. That he wouldn’t hurt her or Madison.” Rodney found his hands moving as he spoke, the habit long engrained from all the various lectures he’d given over the years. “She doesn’t know why I left.”

“Uh, Rodney,” John began again, apparently still at a loss for words.

“Yeah, I get it. You’re not a counselor. Come on, Atlantis needs us.” Rodney stood up and was glad to discover that his legs were steady. He looked away as John got to his feet and they started walking together back through the winding hallway that had led them to the observation room. They fell into step with each other easily, years of hiking on missions subconsciously synchronizing their rhythms. 

It wasn’t until they were nearing the main hallways of Atlantis that John stopped, waiting until Rodney had stopped as well before speaking. “You can talk to me, if you want. I probably won’t have any advice, but I can listen.” He glanced at Rodney briefly, avoiding eye contact.

Rodney rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Doctor Phil. I assure you that if I need advice, you will not be my first stop.”

The slight twitch of John’s lips meant that Rodney’s message had been received loud and clear. It was the way their team, with the exception of Teyla, communicated; in codes that could mean what they said or what the person would have said if they could have. Rodney’s statement meant something closer to ‘thanks, I will,’ than what he had actually said. It was a wonder that they went on as many successful diplomatic missions as they did. “I’ll take care of Elizabeth and Carson. They don’t have to know anything.”

Rodney took a quick peek at John before shaking his head. “No. I’ll take care of it.” As much as he dreaded the thought of having those conversations he wouldn’t send John in his stead to make excuses for him. One of the most surprising things that Rodney had learned about himself in Atlantis was that he couldn’t sit back and watch his team in danger without throwing himself into the pot as well, and having John lose face with Elizabeth somehow counted. He was beginning to wonder if it was a genetic defect found in all the members of the SGC.

“I think they’re having lasagna in the mess tonight,” John offered, demonstrating one of what Rodney found to be John’s best qualities: his ability to let a conversation drop when things got too awkward.

“They always have pudding cups when they serve lasagna.” Rodney took off in the direction of the mess hall with John at his side. Another day in Atlantis, another crisis averted and they were all still alive and mostly in one piece. It’s what they’d all learned to call a successful day in the Pegasus galaxy.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic and others can also be found on my Dreamwidth fandom account: [Disclosure](http://welfycat.dreamwidth.org/3711.html)


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